A Lost Sun By Dan Gordon PLYMOUTH NORTH HIGH SCHOOL

Let me begin by telling you about the fog. Starting about three weeks ago, the thick, lifeless beast rolled in with the same sort of pungent attitude as a stray house cat. It first crept around only in the morning time, peering around corners and slithering through gardens, but was soon vanquished by bright rays of uninterrupted sunshine. The vile creature then repeated this act of sheer aggression so frequently that eventually it was able to establish dominance over the surrounding area. It clawed its way towards us, its suffocating presence causing a eerie mood of dread and stillness. This had a strange effect on the calendar. The passing days seemed to morph into one big giant sweaty nightmare. However, the day I remember most was when the sun was blocked out entirely, bested from its righteous throne. It was a bitter day, the kind of day that made your teeth tremble and shiver with resonant vigor; stay in cold more than 15 minutes and you needed braces. The tall oak tree in the front yard more resembled a clamshell, the way its lengthy desiccated branches closed in around the base of the trunk. For weeks I had watched the graceful golden hued leaves float melodiously to the ground, where their warming colors could be enjoyed for a little while longer. But the fog had changed all that. It was suffocating. It turned the flaxen leaves into cold wet useless shreds of rot and waste.
Two heads could be seen bouncing up and down through the green and blue stained glass window in the foyer. Our glass window was quite a show. The showcase of the entire household, displayed high so that all could see. It was an antique, full of mouth-blown blues and mottled whites. Dark hues of gray encapsulated the stormy aura the window gave off to all who gazed at it. Decorative soldering detail and seedy glass nuggets evoked a lukewarm sea spray forever trapped in the confines of the 6 darkly stained oak panels. Although there were no seagulls depicted in the glass, anyone who looked up at the window could hear their squeals. Sometimes, if you closed your eyes, you could even hear the faint flapping of wings as the gulls soared across a rocky beach. Your ears might even pick up the desperate moans of hungry birds flapping and twisting and turning all over that unfinished piece of bread. Screaming. Always screaming. Screams of death.
The window was enclosed in six individual panes, in the traditional copper-foil technique, which were then installed into a vintage wood window frame, stripped of its paint and stained a dark mahogany. Every time the sun shined, a giant wave gleamed down on the dusty orange mosaic tiles of the entire foyer hallway. A hallway dusty with the hairs of residents long gone. Every time the sun shined, everyone around was transported to some faraway beach, where they could laugh and live and experience the pure ecstasy of youth. And sometimes, when the sun shined, it felt like he was back here with us, playing catch in the yard with me and Tom. Or driving around town in his old 4 door Chevy, complete with a small plastic hula girl on the dash and a pair of fuzzy purple vending machine dice hanging from the mirror. But the 4 door Chevy sits vacant in our garage. The fuzzy dice and the hula girl on the dashboard are still waiting for the next great excursion around town. But back to the window.
Mother loved that window. The way it made her feel. The sea spray gently nudging her face, reminding her that everything would be ok. The window was a safe haven, the only one of its kind in the household. No stray bullets over there, no sniper fire hitting shaggy palm trees, causing countless men to squirm around like amoeba under a microscope. Bumping into each other, trapped on some giant glass slide, knowing that this was their destiny. A glass coffin, Unbreakable.
Mother also loved the feel of sand slipping through her toes. “Its like a free massage!” she used to say with an empowering smile. And she meant it. No new age healing for her. No acupuncture, no herbal medicine, not even a flu shot. All she needed was the stained glass window, its many hues and tinges gleaming across her worry ridden face, seemingly erasing whatever was ailing her at the moment.
But that was only when the sun shined. It had been overcast and gloomy like this for a while. Today, instead of coming out to carry us away, our Sun opted for a long retreat behind a thick dense fog that ostensibly rolled in from nowhere. “No explanation,” the weatherman had announced through the small black and silver storm radio that was kept in the kitchen, next to a diminutive bowl of fruit.
The bowl of fruit led a curious existence. It was only filled with bananas. Five or six green bananas. I had once mistaken them for plantains, because they were so green and unripe. No one could explain it. The five or six bananas just stayed there, acquiring no brown sugary spots usually attri

It needs a lot of tightening up.

I suggest "The First Five Pages" by Noah Lukeman for instructions on how to do that. Just his chapter on adjectives and adverbs, followed by the exercises at the end of the chapter, which you do on YOUR story, will open your eyes.

Amazon.com for new or abebooks.com for used. It’s not an expensive book and he has the editing credentials to back up every word in the book. It will change the way you write forever.

I have 4 dogs, and 3 cats and a rat and a gecko. They are ALL WELL taken care of.
2 of the cats like to go out side (Jazzmine, and Frank) in the morning and come in at night for bed then are kitten (Josie) is a indoor cat.
Are dogs go in and out and stay in for bed and Sammy,Amber,Tony are min pin and Copper is a mix and they are all small.
Baby (the rat) comes out every hour to be held and run around the floor with josie (I know its wired lol).
The geko hates being held and she ate her front feet (we talk to are vet about her and she said to take the heat lamp off her and it work) now she has stubs but walks fine!
We also have a hamster but she does not have long left she is 5 years old dwarf hamster her name is Kathy
Then we have 3 small fish in a 10 gallon heat tank

-The house is very clean-
-We have a 4 bedroom house- It is a 1805 house so it is old and huge
-No pee or poop on the floor at all they are all crate/out door trained-
-Tony was a rescue from a animal hoarder/breeder the animal cops were going to take him! Right after we turned on the car to leave they got there)-
-All spayed/Neutered except for sammy he could not go under he could stop breathing because he was from a puppy mill (we did not know that until he got sick a long time ago).
-All are well trained-
-Tony and Amber are very protective over the fam and the house (they were trained to be protect over the house but are fine with people if they know them)

There is one thing I WANT A Golden Retriever I have been wanting one for over 7 years and I have good grades etc and have a job and help take care of the animals. It would be a female (would be spayed when old enough). I would try to train her to be a service dog and when I move out to College she would move with me! She would be the LAST animal!

Please tell me if I sound like a hoarder! I see those shows and I think I am but I am a clean person, the house is NOT falling apart etc. Don’t be rude!

Ps I got rid of my bird 4 month ago to a nice home
I am a real big animal lover (the whole fam is)! My cat almost killed a squairl one time but me and my mom saved him and nursed him back to health and now has all his shot and lives in the wild!
Cats get a bath every month! We deep clean the house every day! I have very mild ocd so my cats and dogs are very clean and the house is realy clean! lol
I am talking about those dogs who go into the nursing homes and meet the elders and go into hospitals to meet sick people kind of service dogs
No the dogs are the familys and mine but the cats are just mine and the golden would be my dog. Ya I am 14 so I still live with the fam and I have a college picked out and they allow pets in some of the dorms and the apts around the college

What differentiates a hoarder from your basic "animal lover" is the hoarder will compulsively collect animals. Compulsively! Hoarding in general is thought to be related to OCD due to several striking similarities in behavior. Not all hoarders keep their pets in less than ideal situations, but many do because they simply take on far more than they can handle.

If you were a hoarder you probably wouldn’t be on here asking if you should get a retriever or if you have too many pets already, you would just compulsively buy a golden retriever.

Summer at North Farm

By Stephen Kuusisto

Finnish rural life, ca. 1910

Fires, always fires after midnight,
the sun depending in the purple birches

and gleaming like a copper kettle.
By the solstice they’d burned everything,

the bad-luck sleigh, a twisted rocker,
things “possessed” and not-quite-right.

The bonfire coils and lurches,
big as a house, and then it settles.

The dancers come, dressed like rainbows
(if rainbows could be spun),

and linking hands they turn
to the melancholy fiddles.

A red bird spreads its wings now
and in the darker days to come.

(so pleeez let me know wht this means ASAP thanks!)

well, seeing as how stephen kuusisto spent 25 years in a helsinki prison for killing his family before he set their corpses on fire, I would assume that the poem is indeed a metaphor for this unforgivable crime, and that the "dancers" and "red bird" represent the bitter, bloodthirsty spirits of his wife and children returning to haunt him in the "darker days to come"